Invasive species are predicted to suffer from reductions in genetic diversity when only a few individuals from the source population colonize new habitats, thus undergoing the founder effect and reducing adaptive potential (Mayr, 1963; Allendorf & Luikart, 2007).

In a process known as the serial founder effect, populations closer (via land migration routes) to modern-day Ethiopia, where the earliest evidence of Homo sapiens has been found, had higher levels of genetic diversity than groups that settled farther away.

Maternal lineage studies of mtDNA haplotype sequences were used to identify a founder effect, defined as the establishment of a new population by a few original founders (in an extreme case, by a single fertilized female) carrying only a small fraction of the total genetic variation of the parental population.

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